


Love the Wine you're With

by superfluouskeys



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Drunk Writing, F/F, F/M, Gen, Most aren't, Multi, Solavellan, angsty fluff, cassadaar, fenhawke - Freeform, i'll mark the nsfw ones in the notes, y e t
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-01 09:10:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 18,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10185860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: A collection of all my prompt fills for the Dragon Age Friday Night Drunk Writing Circle!





	1. Your bed after travelling

**Author's Note:**

> Since I tend to keep these kind of ....like...superficial enough not to be confusing, it might be obvious, but in case you just stumbled in here somewhere, my main Inquisitor's name is Elonaya Lavellan. <3
> 
> Generally I have -4 fucks to give for universe consistency and maybe like 1 and a half fucks to give for timeline consistency.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-game, pre-Trespasser Solavellan pining.

At first she’d hated it. Shem bed, too soft, melting beneath her, gently closing in around her, suffocating her with softness. She hadn’t been able to sleep much. Always jolted awake choking back a scream.

Later on she’d been so exhausted by the time she staggered back into it that she could do nothing else but sleep. Josephine had to send someone to wake her, always some poor frightened elf looking at her like she was a monster or a saviour.

Then there was that brief stretch of time, frozen in her mind as though it were a false memory or a bit of a half-forgotten dream, when her bed had been a warm and welcoming place with warm and welcoming arms, spindly, all pointy elbows, strangely comforting firmness that left an ache in her neck she wouldn’t have traded away for anything. She had spent all the days of her brief existence traveling, never really thought of any place as home, and never even thought she would miss her clan until she realised there would be no returning to them, but during this time she’d begun to think of that particular configuration of soft fluffy bed and hard spindly limbs as a homecoming, something to look forward to after weeks of tireless travel.

Tonight, after the grand celebration Josephine had thrown together, with all the toasts to friendship and camaraderie and victory and the future they all now dared to dream of, she’d thought surely she would be granted the glorious respite of utter exhaustion. She fell face first into her fluffy pillow and inhaled deeply, and nearly choked on tears she didn’t have time to process.

It was the scent. A subtle thing, something she couldn’t even name at first. She rolled over, panting, struggling to breathe, and the bed was closing in around her again, the faint remaining smell of him as clear to her as though he were still here with his gangly limbs and soft voice and pretty lies

She shoved her fist against her mouth and struggled to steady her breathing, reminded herself that he was gone. He was gone and he lied and he broke her heart anyway and why should she still care?

It didn’t matter anymore.

It didn’t matter anymore that he had saved her life or that he had helped the Inquisition or that he had shared her bed or that he had called her his heart, because in the end it was all a lie.

She rolled back over, masochistically inhaled the faint scent that lingered on the pillow and clutched it to her chest.

Foolish child, she could hear her Keeper chide, just before she’d left. The outside world is no place for us. It will chew you up and spit you out, if you let it.

She hadn’t expected that to be their final exchange. What she would give to return home to her clan! But there was no place for her there anymore. This bed was hers to wallow in now, a place to return to after her travels, to contemplate what she had wrought.

She wondered whether, in time, the scent of him would fade. Perhaps one night she wouldn’t even think of him or the nights they spent here together. Then one night would turn into two, then into a week, then a month…

She inhaled again, exhaled a shuddering sigh. She doubted it. More likely his memory was frozen here, not so much by physical reality as by her own treacherous mind.


	2. The taste of almonds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The taste of almonds  
> Vaguely Solavellan

She’s so hungry it can no longer be ignored.  Even her staff feels heavy.  She’s getting dizzy, and she would have fallen off balance if she hadn’t sat down first.  The demons have scared off all the wildlife, so that the forest is eerily silent around them, and it’s an unfamiliar territory, so they’re not sure what plants will kill them.  Most, from the look of them.

Solas has that strange excitement about him, like he’s about to share something from the Fade that he’s particularly fond of, and she’s befuddled when he drops a handful of ordinary-looking nuts into her hand.  Granted, they’re delicious–made all the more savoury by her ravenous hunger.  When he elaborates, they all fall to their knees like madmen, gathering the plentiful almonds from the forest floor.

There is something singular about feasting after you have been half-starved, and it applies to many areas outside the realm of sustenance.  She realizes later on, when the gnawing ache in her belly has mostly subsided, that she has had them once before–clan Lavellan traveled somewhere once, where they harvested these things called almonds, and ate a few, but stored most to trade.

She tells this to Solas, not because she expects him to particularly care, but because her other companions are known to get antsy when she’s being too “elfy”, and realizes it’s been a long time since she’s spoken freely about her clan.  It’s not unlike a burst of flavour when one has longed only for a scrap.

“Well,” Solas offers, with his usual penchant for turns of phrase with hidden meanings, “it seems you may gorge yourself on this harvest, for there are no predators to steal them away from you in exchange for a pittance.”

She relishes the crack of a few more almond shells.  "Bit of a laboured metaphor.  I don’t think most predatory animals trouble themselves with nuts.“

“I continue to find it odd,” Solas counters, sitting next to her, “that your clan placed so much focus on relations with humans.”

She runs her hand through her hair.  "Yes, I know what you meant,“ she snaps.

“Have you no opinion to offer?” Solas prods.

And she supposes it’s moments like that–simple on the surface, but nuanced because of their context in the greater arc of her life, that make her feel like she’s feasting upon honesty.  Her clan disparaged her distaste for humans, her human companions do not want to hear about it, and now that someone is asking, she suddenly feels like she’s been drowning and didn’t even notice until she was safe on dry land, coughing and sputtering on the foreign sensation of fresh air in her lungs.

“I suppose if my clan had wanted my opinion, I wouldn’t be here,” she replies, after a moment.

They talk for awhile about relations between humans and elves, but the conversation doesn’t feel quite as important as the asking.  She feels full and tired and pleasantly sluggish, taken a bit off her guard for once, and this is the feeling, the moment she will forever associate with the taste of almonds.


	3. Blood at the corner of your mouth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cassandra/female Lavellan  
> Varric/female Hawke  
> Solavellan
> 
> Angsty fluff--everyone is happy everyone survives.

Cassandra had spent more than half her life training not to notice little things that bothered her during battle.  They returned to her slowly when the imminent danger had passed.  An itch somewhere beneath her armour, a particular twinge in her right knee, and something (usually several somethings) on her face.  That was the way it had been with her most noticeable scar.  She’d barely noticed it until someone else was telling her she was coming undone.

She was biting the inside of her cheek so hard it smarted a bit.  Her lips were dry and cracked, and when she licked them she tasted blood, but still this did not draw her focus from the wreckage just a flight above where she stood–

Indeed, where they all stood, waiting.

Like a pot of water over a fire, a hazy emotion began to simmer in the pit of her stomach, gradually rose and bubbled and boiled over in white-hot panic.  The Inquisitor had survived many things–things that seemed so impossible they were miraculous–but could she survive this?

A fitting end to one of Varric’s tales.  The tragic young hero is slain in the final confrontation, sacrifices herself for the good of the world.  For the good of people who would not have done the same for her.

A fitting end to a story, perhaps, but a senseless end to a life, to a person.  Slowly, Cassandra allowed the weight of reality to tumble down upon her shoulders.  Small realizations created tiny cracks in her armour until the whole facade fell asunder, and Cassandra hung her head in despair.

She felt a change before she saw it.  It was like the warmth of the sun.  Lavellan appeared as though from a heavenly light, shining down upon them, whole and alive and miraculous, and Cassandra wiped her face to hide her tears, and was surprised by the blood on her gauntlet.

* * *

Returning to the physical world after standing in the goddamn Fade should have felt better, more normal.  But Varric felt like he was underwater.  Everything was murky and distorted and too loud, but garbled and nonsensical.  Like the Fade was the place that made sense, and the real world was a bunch of bullshit.

There was blood in his mouth.  Blood running down his face.  Was it his or someone else’s?  Was he biting the inside of his cheek still?  His face felt numb.

“Where’s Hawke?” he asked, and couldn’t hear his own voice.  It was like he hadn’t spoken at all, like the words had gotten caught in his throat.

Varric had never had a dream or a nightmare, but he remembered what Hawke had said to him once, in a rare moment of quiet honesty.

I have this dream a lot.  I try to scream, but I can’t.  It’s like it won’t leave my throat, like I don’t have the air.

“WHERE’S HAWKE?” he screamed, could still barely hear himself over the dull roar of the crowd around them, or some kind of distant, otherworldly thunder from the Maker-forsaken place they’d staggered out of.

There was blood dripping down his chin now.  Definitely his.  He couldn’t feel his cheek where he’d spent too long biting it.  He looked at the Seeker, whose attention was on anything but him, wasn’t sure he could bear to lock eyes with Lavellan, but he had to know the truth.

Then the world was white and impossibly louder, and Varric’s hearing was impossibly worse.  His hands and knees hit the jagged pavement and now there was blood on them, too, but he could barely feel them.  The first clear words he heard were Lavellan, trying to make some awkward speech about heroes and sacrifice and Alistair.

But Varric was blinking away bleary vision in a vain attempt to focus on the figure of Hawke, hunched over, and she was bleeding, too, but she was not trapped in the Fade forever.  She was bleeding, and here, and alive, and somehow this made blood seem like a victory.  They were bleeding because they were _alive_.

* * *

For the first time in centuries, Solas found himself utterly torn on the matter of how to proceed from here.  Corypheus had shown himself, and in doing so had shown himself to be a far greater threat than even Solas had already realized.  That was what came of tampering with forces beyond one’s ken, he supposed bitterly, but there would be plenty of time for self-hatred later.  There always was, after all.

At the moment, he was faced with Lavellan, half-dead from any number of ailments, plucked out of the snow by the Seeker maybe an hour or two from freezing to death with a dislocated shoulder and the remnants of battle wounds from the skirmish that had led up to Corypheus’s grand entrance.  He’d set her shoulder and was embroiled in the long process of curing her hypothermia, but these were in the end superficial concerns.  Lavellan was stalwart enough to bear the orb’s mark; she was unlikely to succumb to any mortal ailment.

What plagued Solas was that he had been seized by an overwhelming need to provide something useful to the Inquisition, or more precisely, to her, in the days and weeks to follow.  He ceased his pacing to sit at her side, checked the setting of her shoulder although he knew it was fine, and allowed his eyes to dart over the contours of her face.

Slave markings of Elgar’nan, dark and twisted and ferocious.  But beneath them the face of an elf with the spark left in her eyes.  She did what she could in this broken world to remain awake amongst sleepwalkers.

He touched her face with his fingertips, the bare skin left untouched by the blood writing.  There was a bit of blood drying in the corner of her mouth.  He had to touch her face to remove it.  A perfectly logical reason for what seemed a senseless gesture.

The feeling of blood on his fingers was a curious thing, thick and sticky and still warm.  For some reason the sensation of it drew all of his focus, and he thought of the spark in her eyes and the sleepwalking masses and how displaced he had felt here until very recently, and how blood was just as much an indicator of life as it was of death or destruction.

Lavellan’s eyes fluttered open and she focused her attention on him.  He had no excuse for the small smile that tugged at the corners of his lips.

“Lovely way to die,” she murmured.

No excuse for his fingertips tracing the vines of bare skin that broke up her dark Vallaslin.  “You’re not going to die.  Not tonight, at least.”

“You sure?” she responded.  Her words were slurred, and there was more blood on her lips.  No excuse for the way Solas felt his heart twist at the prospect that she might have had a closer brush with death than he’d realized.  “Should’ve died…few times already.  Must be…very unlucky.”

He chuckled in spite of himself.  Meant to reach for a cloth to wipe away the blood at the corners of her lips, but was not eager to break the stillness between them.  No excuse for it.


	4. Snow down the back of your coat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluffy Hawke/Varric

His first reaction was to reach for a crossbow that wasn’t there.  His second was to let loose an impressive stream of obscenities in the general direction of Hawke, who had already half-disappeared behind a snowbank, anticipating retaliation.

The feeling of snow shoved against the bare skin of his back was agonising, deeply wrong and uncomfortable in a way few such simple things could be.  The snow continued to shift and drip no matter how he shook his clothes, and to his previous tirade he added one last “shit, Hawke” before he gathered his senses and knelt surreptitiously to formulate his counterattack.

“Can’t turn my back on you for a damned second, can I?” he continued.

“Shame on you, Varric,” she replied pleasantly, now utterly obscured by the mound of snow she’d chosen as her cover.  "I thought you never turned your back on anyone.“

There was a veritable fuckton of snow–he hadn’t quite realized it until now, for Marian Hawke was not an easy person to lose–and by the look of the sky, more was yet to fall.

“Anyone ever managed to pull that trick on you?” he asked her casually.  In battle at least, Hawke had few weaknesses, but impatience was certainly one.

“I’d have to turn my back first,” Hawke retorted.

“Uncomfortable as fuck,” Varric continued conversationally, still squatting just a little.  Sure enough he saw the telltale top of her head appear above the snow, black against bright white like ink against paper.

“Come now, Varric, I didn’t mean anything by–ah!”

His snowball hit her right in the face–the soft, powdery stuff that flaked and spiraled everywhere when it made impact, and as soon as Varric had begun to laugh, like a reflex, Hawke had hit him back, for in battle she had few weaknesses.

Varric dove for cover (much easier to find for a stealthy dwarf than for a lanky human), and they lobbed snow at each other in varying formations for the better part of an hour, intermittently screaming swears and doubling over with laughter.

When Hawke launched a particularly brutal assault–somehow managed to throw snowball after snowball without stopping, and Varric suspected magical interference, but was laughing too hard to call her out on it–he choked out his concession. “Fine, FINE, you win, Hawke, have mercy!”

She appeared above him, glowing triumphant, pink cheeks and swirling aura of newly fallen snow, and offered him her hand.  "The valiant Champion grants her foe’s humble plea for mercy.“

“Yeah, yeah,” Varric took her hand, though he didn’t really rely on it to stand. “I’ll be sure to work that part into the novelization of your evil deeds.”

“That’s all I ask.”  The snow was starting to fall again.  Hawke let go of his hand as they headed indoors, and slung her arm over his shoulders instead.  "It’s sort of a pretty storm, don’t you think?“

"Sure, if you like a blast of icy wind to the face,” Varric replied.  "And a fucking handful of snow down your shirt.“

"Who says I don’t?”

“So no one ever managed to catch the great Champion off her guard in a snowstorm?”

“Guess I’m always just one step ah–aaaah!”

With the masterful sleight of hand his chosen fighting style afforded him, Varric deposited a handful of snow down the back of Hawke’s tunic and skillfully slipped out of her reach, just as she’d begun to yell “You son of a bitch!”


	5. Red wine-stained lips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Solavellan angsty-fluff

He’s never seen her drinking alone–usually around a campfire, nursing one of those bottles they’ve uncovered in some obscure corner of Thedas, and always sharing it with at least one other person–and this is an especially odd sight.  It’s wine, dark red, and she’s poured it into a glass instead of taking it straight from the bottle.  She’s staring out the half-shattered old window into the cold night, sipping a glass of wine as though still dining at the Winter Palace.

“May I join you?” he ventures.

She doesn’t make any sudden movements, but her hand twitches and she puts down the glass.  He startled her, but she very nearly hid her surprise entirely.  "I doubt I’m good company at the moment,“ she replies.

“On the contrary,” he says, “I find your company highly enjoyable in any number of circumstances.”  It’s a bit of a stupid thing to say, perhaps, and it tumbles from his lips before he’s had time to fully think it through.  He folds his hands behind his back, a reminder not to lower his guard in such a foolish manner again, and approaches.

She twists her head to look up at him, brows knitted with curiosity beneath the hard, dark markings she’s chosen as her blood writing.  She has such a youthful face–the presence of the Vallaslin upon it twists the knife in his chest every time he looks too closely upon her.

 _None of your business_ , he reminds himself.   _Not your concern_.

“Would you like some wine?” she offers after a moment’s befuddlement.  "Dorian recommended it, so I imagine it’s a bit fancier than the Inquisition’s usual fare.“

But he has hardly processed her question.  His guard has been shattered yet again, for when her lips move, he’s drawn to the red stain of the wine upon them, and for some strange reason, cannot will himself to ignore it.  He opens his mouth as though to respond, and finds himself bereft of a single coherent sentence.

He’s got her full attention now.  He closes his mouth uselessly and stands helpless as she turns to contemplate him. “Is something on your mind, Solas?”

The room is eerily quiet but for the wind that roars through the cracked windows of the old fortress.  His mind is overwhelmed by pale skin, flushed from the alcohol, dark blood writing, god of vengeance, vengeful memories that took her history and left only these cruel markings behind, full lips stained from the wine, and how is he supposed to articulate any sort of answer to the question she has posed?

She stands and moves around the chair and table to confront him directly, toe to toe, chin lifted high and shoulders pushed back to display her full stature, a clear challenge.  She inclines her head in another silent question–has surely by now noticed the way he cannot drag his eyes away from her lips–and his only response is involuntary.  Without his permission, he feels his hand trailing upward, lightly touches her face with his fingertips.

It’s such a small thing. Her eyelids droop, just ever so slightly, nearly imperceptible, when he touches her, but it’s all the confirmation he needs.  He leans in to capture her wine-stained lips with his own, tastes the rich sweetness of it as he gently pulls her lower lip between his teeth, catches it on her breath as she breaks away, just a hair’s width, with a shuddering sigh that ends in another kiss.


	6. Finding old photographs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just some sad unrequited Hawke/Varric and FenHawke bc I am A Trashcan.

Varric did his best to play off the depth of his grief to the Inquisitor, but he got the feeling she saw through him anyway.  She was surprisingly understanding–supportive, almost–when he told her he needed to take a trip.  World falling down around their ears, but nothing he put onto paper would suffice at all.

Fenris didn’t live in Kirkwall anymore, but Varric knew for a fact that he still returned occasionally to keep apprised of any news that might pertain to him, or any letter that might have been unable to find him elsewhere.  Since H–since Fenris had been left behind…on the journey to Skyhold, Varric had no doubt he’d be keeping his ears to the ground.

Maker.  Every step was agony.

The worst part was knowing she might still be alive somewhere, beyond the material world, beyond the only reality Varric could conceive of, facing what would be her final foe alone.  Without Aveline, or Fenris, or Merrill, or Isabela…without him.  A sorry end for the life of someone so well-loved.

Varric felt heavier here, like the past was weighing him down.  Kirkwall still smelled like blood and ash and death, but one didn’t find quite as many bodies strewn across the street as in the good old days.  An endless sea of acquaintances greeted him as cheerfully as was customary, welcomed him home, asked how long he was staying, if he might be down for a game of cards.

For the first time in his entire life, Varric didn’t feel much like playing.

But all things considered, Varric was handling this very well.  He congratulated himself, even.  Look at you, Varric.  You made it all the way to Kirkwall.  You haven’t accidentally thought her name yet.  There’s the spot where she slit a man’s throat with the blade of her staff, and you’re doing okay.  One foot in front of the other, Varric.  You’re almost home–

It was a damn near perfect likeness of her.  A drawing someone had put an awful lot of time and effort into for a WANTED poster.  And nailed to a post just outside Varric’s estate, no less.  Passive-aggressive fucks.

Varric ripped the poster from the nail and stormed inside, ignored the inquiries of at least three separate acquaintances calling out to him from the street.  Once the door had slammed decisively behind him, he all but collapsed against it.

Gone.

Alive or dead, he would never know.  Hanging in the balance somewhere beyond his reach.

His fault.

Should never have dragged her there.  Should never have sent her a letter.  Should never have allowed his longing to see her in the flesh again to overtake him, to render him so careless.

In the sketch on the poster, she was scowling.  To Varric, it was a funny expression.  Like when she pulled a menacing face over being cut off for the night, or being deprived of the last cookie.  Painful jolt as he remembered a particularly ferocious battle over some scones one of Leandra’s friends had brought them.

Fenris knocked on the window rather than the door.  He wasn’t wanted anymore, not criminally, but old habits died hard.

“Didn’t take you long,” Varric pushed open his window.  He wondered whether Fenris had been skulking around Kirkwall since she left his side.  

Fenris climbed through the window as though it were a normal thing to do.  “For a trained rogue, yours is not an easy presence to miss.”

“By all means, come in,” Varric attempted to jest, but it fell more than a little flat.

“I expect you’ve returned because you have news,” was Fenris’s response, equally flat.

There was a kind of suffocating tension between them in this moment.  Fenris knew something was up, and Varric was loath to disclose it even though that had been his primary goal in coming here.  

They’d been friends once, Varric mused, but under the surface, Varric had always gathered that Fenris knew Varric’s feelings for Hawke were not as strictly platonic as he’d claimed.  That sort of thing would never have mattered under different circumstances, for Varric had stayed in Kirkwall while Fenris had left with her, but now…well.

Varric stared at Fenris unblinking for too long, mouth half agape, struggling for the words he’d been unable to put to paper.  He saw understanding and trepidation in Fenris’s eyes, but Fenris waited nonetheless for confirmation of what he must already know.

Varric hung his head.  Handed Fenris the poster.

“Gone,” Fenris breathed.

Varric covered his eyes, hid the tears well enough, but couldn’t do much for the tremor in his voice when he responded, “Gone.”

They stood in silence for some time.  Varric heard the rustling of the poster, but didn’t trust himself to look up just yet.  Would have reached out a comforting hand, but Fenris didn’t like to be touched.

“What a…magnificent likeness,” Fenris murmured, voice low and gravelly as in his darkest moments.

A strangled sort of chuckle escaped Varric’s lungs.  “Yeah.  Whoever made that poster must have been a big fan.”

To his immense surprise, it was Fenris who reached out and laid a gloved hand upon Varric’s shoulder.  “I am…sorry,” he said.

Varric wiped a sleeve across his eyes, nodded firmly.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Me too.”


	7. undone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Solavellan

She was a mistake.  In every sense of the word.

With any sense in his head he could have said that she wasn’t his mistake.  Or merely his by the transitive property.  Better that she bear the mark than Corypheus, certainly, though he did wish he were strong enough to keep it from poisoning her mana, and her blood.

It would kill her, eventually.  She was somewhat remarkable to bear it so well to begin with.

Somewhat remarkable in other ways, as well.  The sort of person who dug beneath the surface more often than not, who did not accept only what she perceived as what was true.  

He enjoyed speaking with her.  Found it a bit odd that anyone should enjoy speaking with this persona he presented now–far more the Solas he had been first than the symbol he had become later.  Thus far in this sleepwalking world in which he had awoken, people mostly ignored him.  It was pleasant…if jarring…to feel seen once more.

With any sense in his head, he’d have left it at that.  But once something had been seen, once a boundary had been breeched, it could not be unseen, unheard, unfelt.  He could not forget the look of her by candlelight, the soft hipefulness in her voice, the feel of her skin beneath his hands.

Perhaps he too had been asleep.

And try though he might to keep his distance after that one momentary misstep, she called to him in dreams.  Quite literally, the pull of the anchor’s magic sang to him of a world he had destroyed–and now there was something new in the song, something impossibly more personal.

He woke poorly rested, sometimes in a cold sweat, overcome by something he hadn’t felt since he’d been a teenager.  He longed to feel her again.

Then it was he who called out to her in dreams.  Perhaps not entirely meaning to, but their return to Skyhold had brought back a flood of age-old feelings that set him alight, and he’d felt a curious, nervous kind of energy that rendered him reckless.

Surprised when she’d answered his call so easily.  He showed her all the sights she’d missed in their time in Haven, told her a bit about his own journey there, and stumbled over his words when she took on that particular look about her he’d seen once before, by candlelight, like she was looking into his soul.

_Felt the whole world change._

Gradually.  Horribly.  Like a well-loved garment coming undone at the seams, like cracks and splinters spidering down the sides of a chalice, like wind and weather wearing away at ancient ruins until all that remained was dust and distant memories.

She kissed him.  Cracks in his composure deepening, and he attempted to withdraw once more.

But if there was one thing Solas knew a great deal about, it was mistakes that could never be undone.  You could patch them up.  Pretend they never happened and accept your lot for however long it lasted.  You could tear the world asunder and start anew.  But once the first fatal fault had appeared, it could never truly be undone.

This time it was he who came to her.  She sat outside on the ramparts, watching the sunset with a flask in her hand, rare moment of aloneness he was loath to interrupt.  But she smiled up at him, gestured that he should join her, and he felt himself coming undone.

After all, it was pleasant, after so much time, simply to be seen.


	8. Digging your fingers into fresh dirt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cassandra/female Lavellan

“Didn’t peg you for a gardener,” Lavellan said by way of greeting, not fully able to keep the contempt from her tone.  

She’d fully intended to avoid the Seeker entirely, as she’d skillfully managed to do almost anytime they weren’t traveling thus far, but the sight was so surprising–the terrifying Seeker who’d nearly beat her to death not a few weeks prior, gently patting at a mound of dirt around a sprig of green–that she hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away.

Cassandra looked up, features somehow softer in surprise.  “Oh. My lady Herald.”  Voice softer, too.  “It is…” she averted her eyes.  “After all this destruction…it is nice to make something grow.”

It was like seeing a different person.  Elonaya felt ill at ease.  Found the pockets of her breeches as a resting place for her fidgety hands.  “Oh,” she responded, eloquently.

“Do…do your people ever plant things?” Cassandra wondered, haltingly.  Their last conversation about ‘her people’ hadn’t gone so well.  Room in your pantheon for the Maker, indeed.

But Elonaya bit back her contempt once more, focused on this new Cassandra she was seeing before her.  “Never really stayed in one place long enough to see anything grow,” she said.  “And the Dalish aren’t known for looking after anyone but ourselves, you know.”

She wasn’t certain what she’d expected, but it wasn’t what Cassandra said next.  “Would you…care to join me?”  

Dark eyes suddenly wide, hesitant, something about her expression that formed a lump in Elonaya’s throat.  She dug her hands deeper into her pockets.  “I…uh.  Now?”

Cassandra held up a little pot with another green sprig protruding from it.  Something hopeful in her eyes now that made Elonaya’s heart twist.  “What better time than the present?” she wondered.  “Haven isn’t a very permanent home, perhaps, but if we do not see it grow, someone else surely will.”

Cassandra indicated a spot next to the sprig she’d just planted, dug into the dirt with her bare hands, and something about the sight was so enchanting that Elonaya felt immediately compelled to join her.  Cool, wet, refreshing.  The soil here was rich and healthy.  She felt a smile cross her features–an odd, stiff sort of thing, for she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt cause for such an expression, and when she dared a glance in Cassandra’s direction, she found that the Seeker was mirroring her expression.

Elonaya scooped the little sprig of Elfroot out of its pot, planted it in the soil, and patted a little mound of dirt around it the way she’d seen Cassandra do moments prior.  She hadn’t really understood what Cassandra meant when she’d spoken at first, but now she did.

Amid all this destruction, it was nice to help something to grow.


	9. Perfume on warm skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Female Lavellan/Josephine <333

Somehow it was all too much to take in.  The garish masks, the bright lights, the impossible Orlesian political scheming…it was all so far removed from anything Lavellan was prepared to deal with.  How could one truly know how to cope with a world so apart from one’s own, even with flawless preparation?

She retreated to the balcony as soon as possible.  Everything about the Winter Palace had an artificial smell about it, like even the air around it had been enchanted with something sickly-sweet, and it made Elonaya’s head spin.  She leaned heavily on the balustrade and watched the people celebrating below her, heard the people dancing behind her, took note of footsteps growing nigh that didn’t sound the same as those of Morrigan, who had just departed.

“Is everything all right?”

Josephine.  So at home here, she likely didn’t realize even half the things that could make a person new to her world feel out of place.

“Long night,” Elonaya replied simply.

Josephine came to stand next to her.  She, too, had a particular smell about her.  But it wasn’t artificial or sickly-sweet.  It was some sort of faint perfume, rich and refreshing, more biting than sweet.  Elonaya hadn’t realized she’d be able to identify the scent, or associate it with Lady Montilyet, until it was contrasted so glaringly against the Orlesian court.

“You performed admirably, Lady Lavellan,” Josephine was saying.  “You made a strong decision.  And everyone here owes you their lives.  That is no small feat.”

“Hm.”  Nothing new there.  People lost their lives, or held onto them a day longer, all hinged upon decisions she made.  Would that she could know what her clanmates thought of that.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the smell of coming rain gradually began to overpower whatever it was that permeated the court.

“Can I get you anything?”

Elonaya’s attention was drawn to Josephine’s hand, fingertips curled just a fraction away from where Elonaya’s elbow rested on the balustrade.  She’d half a mind to ask to be left alone, but a much larger part of her was practically crying out for company.  She didn’t wish to be left alone in a state of existential brooding on the balcony whilst her companions gathered up what small scraps of enjoyment they could out of this mess, but at the same time, she didn’t wish to burden Josephine with the weight she felt resting upon her shoulders.

She looked up into Josephine’s eyes, dark and wide and sparkling, eager to assist in any way she could.  Now, looking at her, Elonaya couldn’t bear to turn a cold shoulder to her.  Did her best to push the heaviness of her thoughts to the back of her mind, and managed a small smile.  “Don’t suppose you’d care to school a lowly Dalish savage in the art of ballroom dancing?”

Josephine’s smile was subtle, hesitant, but somehow infinitely warm.  “Oh, I thought you’d never ask!” she cried, and gently tugged at Elonaya’s arms as the music from inside swelled, and the storm above them continued to gather.

Though Elonaya was not imbued with any natural grace, Josephine did not seem to mind–indeed, she had enough grace and poise for the both of them.  The subtle bite of her perfume radiating from the warm skin of her exposed collarbone was intoxicating, and it wasn’t long before Elonaya didn’t need to work very hard at all to push her worries from her mind, if only for one beautiful moment.


	10. Nap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Female Lavellan/Josephine

Elonaya does not nap.  Barely sleeps at all.  And hardly knew anyone in her clan who slept soundly.  An enjoyable side benefit of living one’s life just ever so slightly poised to pack up and run at a moment’s notice.

But it’s a curious afternoon at Skyhold.  Snow is falling in sheets, bringing with it a kind of deafening stillness.  Those with any talent for makeshift construction have already haphazardly boarded up all the places where the fortress is particularly exposed, but mostly everyone has retreated to the cozy little rooms where there are no faults in the structure, that they may warm themselves and wait out the storm in relative calmness.

Josephine has taken it upon herself to make everyone some sort of family specialty–like hot cocoa but with spices Elonaya could not name if she tried.  It’s thick and rich and creamy, and settles heavy in her stomach, seems to drag her down into a sense of peace she’s seldom known in the entirety of her brief existence, let alone with the Inquisition.

And then, with this sort of hesitant hopefulness Elonaya isn’t sure how to understand, Josephine sits next to her.  Elonaya asks her about the spices, and Josephine murmurs almost secretively about the special times she was permitted to enjoy this delight in her earliest youth, and it’s not that she’s boring, not at all, but that Elonaya is so overcome by a sense of deep and resounding peace that she begins to drift.

Faintly, she realizes she’s laid her head in Josephine’s lap.  Josephine is stroking her hair now, and it’s sending tingles all through her body, down her spine and over her skin and out to the very tips of her fingers and toes, and she’s still talking, absently, perhaps to herself.  After some indeterminate stretch of time, Elonaya regains the presence of mind to reopen her eyes, just enough to look up at Josephine, to assure her she didn’t mean to stop listening to her story.

But Josephine’s head had fallen back against the sofa cushions, lips just slightly agape, breathing steadily, fingers still threaded through Elonaya’s hair.

Josephine does not nap.  Barely sleeps at all.  As Elonaya drifts away from the material world yet again, she delights in the idea that perhaps Josephine, too, has found a rare moment of peace.


	11. Svelte

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marian Hawke/Merrill

Merrill is air.

Words halting, rambling, running, stumbling, like the wind, or a gentle autumn breeze.  Changeable.  Uncertain.  

Figure small, svelte, sylphlike.  As many elves are, certainly, but not the ones in her clan, nor the others Hawke knows.  Merrill’s clan is rooted to the earth, feet practically dug in, and Merrill is air, rising in gusts above them.

Merrill is earth.

A fallen angel in the alienage.  Hawke would beg her to come away from it, but Gamlen wouldn’t have it.  It’s not like anyone else has much room, apart from Fenris who fills his room with a thick air of contempt that’s often more stifling than a crowd of other people–but Merrill insists on staying, and after a time, Hawke begins to understand.  The elves in the alienage are her people just as her clan are her people.

Her feet might not be stuck in the ground, but she is rooted to the earth just as all of them are, for what is air but the atmosphere?

Merrill is water.

Flowing, gushing, twisting, ice and blood in equal measure in her magic.  Changeable, uncertain, but not quite as halting.  Rambling, running, but in a direction, with a purpose, as a river runs to the sea.  Merrill has set out on a mission, and her mission makes her more whole than she was at first.

The others don’t understand that, but they’re hypocrites for it.  Hawke understands all of them, and perhaps that’s part of why they hang around her even despite her knack for trouble.  Sometimes you know in your soul that you have to do something even if others won’t like it.  Even if it might be dangerous.  Even if it’s definitely dangerous.

Merrill is fire.

It burns in her eyes sometimes, and Hawke is almost taken aback by the sudden intensity of it.  Nothing one minute, flames the next.  They’ll be having a fairly normal conversation and suddenly Merrill turns those wide eyes on her and her rambling running words take on a deeper meaning that catches and spreads and ignites and destroys.

One night Merrill is at Hawke’s door, like a catastrophe, positively aflame, and she’s saying things that don’t seem to mean what they are, and Hawke doesn’t entirely understand where this is going until Merrill kisses her–throws herself up onto her tiptoes and manages to reach Hawke’s lips!

And she’s air, flying, earth, hovering atmospheric, water, rushing to the sea, and fire, igniting.


	12. Lips brush (FenHawke)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FenHawke is in the chapter title bc there's another one for the same prompt.

Marian Hawke had always loved to touch people.  This was a well-documented fact.  Even amongst her own family she was uncommonly touchy.  Carver preferred to keep his distance usually, and Mother and Bethany only got touchy when emotions ran high.  She’d been told her father had been much the same, but had little memory of him to go by.

Her newfound companions ranged from enjoying and reciprocating her natural friendliness to barely tolerating it, with the notable exception of the freed Tevinter elf with the curious lyrium markings that seemed to extend along every line of his form.  Around Fenris there hung an unmistakeable aura, as though emanating from the lyrium itself: _do not touch_.

They spent long evenings talking, instead.  When he told her more of his tragic story, she understood more of what intuition had whispered to her in the beginning.  She very nearly slipped up a handful of times–outstretched hand in comfort, or in that simple longing to feel that had always compelled her, but she’d caught it in time, and he’d made no mention of it.

She flirted shamelessly with him, and he didn’t exactly discourage her.  Sometimes flirted back, even, but most often seemed almost surprised.  Then one night he was drinking from this bottle of his former master’s wine, abruptly shattered it against the wall, and retrieved another from the cellar for them to share.  They passed the bottle back and forth in front of a roaring fire, spoke of their various malcontentments, from the small to the grandiose, and at some point their eyes met, illuminated by the flames from the fireplace, and they couldn’t quite manage to look away.

‘You…were saying?” Fenris attempted.

“I?” Hawke wondered hazily.  “Oh, no.  Surely it was you.”

The corners of Fenris’s lips quirked upward in a near-imperceptible little smile, and Hawke very nearly launched herself at him with full force.  As it was, they moved in perfect synchronization towards one another, but stopped just short, gasping for air, less than a finger’s width between them at any given point, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath against her own lips, but not quite touching.

“Terribly sorry,” Hawke murmured airily.  “It seems I’ve misplaced myself in your personal space.”

Fenris began, with agonizing slowness, to close the minuscule distance between them.  “Command me to go, and I shall,” he whispered, and she just barely felt the faintest brush of his lips against hers, the faintest pressure of his fingertips on her waist.

“Funny,” she breathed.  “I was going to say the same thing.”


	13. Dust floating in golden sunlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FenHawke

This place is falling apart.  Hawke isn’t usually one to notice disrepair, but she wakes to sunlight streaming into her eyes, filtered only by copious flecks of dust spilling from the hole that has formed in the ceiling above them, and there’s nothing that catches her attention quite like disturbing what little slumber she is afforded.

She struggles to piece together the events that preceded this moment, not because of a hangover–Hawke has always held her liquour remarkably well, but she hadn’t a drop to drink the previous evening–but because she is not the sharpest of tacks first thing in the morning.

Anyway, it seems like something out of a particularly troubling wet dream.  He’s gorgeous, no denying that, in a very interesting way, which is the sort of thing that has always captured Hawke’s fancy in both men and women.  And he’s a troubled soul–nothing like a broody elf to set one’s loins figuratively aflame.  But much as he doesn’t seem to mind her shameless flirting–even encourages it occasionally–she’d always thought that hopeless attraction would remain painfully unrealized.  He doesn’t exactly like anyone getting within ten paces of him.

Blinks a few times, rubs the sleep from her eyes.  Dust everywhere.  Rubs it from beneath her nose.  Shifts so the sun isn’t directly in her eyes and rolls right into a warm body.

Fenris stirs, low, gravelly sounds in his sleep, but does not start awake as she’d feared.  He’s lying flat on his back, face held high as though with pride, partially illuminated by the sun and the flecks of dust, lyrium tattoos glimmering in the faint light of the morning.  Brow furrowed.  Hawke resists the urge to smoothe it with her fingertips, elects to let him rest a moment longer.  All of them get so little rest these days.

She settles back into her pillow, scoots a bit closer to avoid a bit more of the sunlight, and rests her hand just shy of Fenris’s shoulder.  When she’s just nearly gone back to sleep, she could swear she feels him take her hand in his, but later on, she’s honestly unsure how much of what’s passed between them exists outside of her fondest dreams.


	14. Lips brush (Cass/Lavellan)

Sometimes it occurs to Elonaya, in a vague sort of way, that she has somehow managed to take in a great deal of information regarding the outlandish behaviour of strangers in a very short span of time. Many of the situations she encounters still seem utterly bizarre to her, where they might well be commonplace to someone else.

Still, she is…fairly certain this pattern is universally unusual.

In the daytime, Cassandra has repeatedly, awkwardly, firmly, haltingly assured her that whatever exists between them cannot be. After dark, however (or sometimes even on particularly dark and stormy days), Cassandra’s actions tell a wildly different story.

She seeks Elonaya out. Even–especially–when Elonaya has been making an effort to avoid her. Initiates and fuels long, deep conversations about everything except the elephant in the room. Sits close–as close as her clanmates sit to one another, but closer than shemlen usually venture. Sometimes seems intentionally to brush her hand against Elonaya’s arm, allow their knees to touch, allow their eyes to meet and make no effort to look away.

It makes Elonaya uncommonly nervous. Her natural inclinations are immutably impulsive. She cannot remember a time in her life when she has showed very much restraint when she longed to do something. And now it’s dark but for the glow from the fireplace, capturing the outline of Cassandra’s features, highlighting the scars on her face and the subtle knitting of her brow, and Elonaya wants to kiss her, but Cassandra has already told her it cannot be.

Cassandra is leaning in now, impossibly, and Elonaya feels her heart racing as though she were in battle. She’s digging her fingernails into her thigh, clenching her jaw to remind herself not to move, not to be the one to close the distance.

“I should go,” Cassandra murmurs, and her lips just barely brush Elonaya’s as she speaks–feather-light, warm, soft, inviting, intoxicating, and it’s all Elonaya can do to keep still.

“Do…you have to?” she wonders, breathless.

“I…yes. Yes.” And she’s gone. There’s warm air from the fire where she was just an instant ago, suffocating, closing in, and Elonaya feels her throat constrict horribly as Cassandra stands and backs away.

“I’m sorry,” says Cassandra, head bowed as though she is speaking to the Herald of Andraste and not to a friend.


	15. Harsh whisper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FenHawke angst

“Please.”  It was a harsh, broken whisper, and it twisted Hawke’s heart.  She was prepared to storm out, let him brood or come after her as he pleased, but the tone of his voice stopped her.

She was used to people being upset with her–why, after a lifetime of it, tension felt far more familiar to her than kindness–but this was different, somehow, and perhaps she’d already known that before Fenris spoke.

“I don’t…mean it…personally.”  She could practically see him without looking at him–could imagine how his jaw must be clenched, his head bowed and his hands balled into fists at his sides.  “I don’t mean it about you.  Or your sister.  Even Merrill has…grown on me…over time.  I meant–”

Hawke felt shame cascading over her in waves, so intensely that she found it difficult to speak.  “I know, Fenris.  I know.  I’m so–  I…” she swallowed, steeled herself for the intensity of his gaze, and turned to face him.  "…shouldn’t have lashed out like that.  I’m sorry.  Bethany’s death is just so fresh in my mind, and Carver’s along with her, and it just…”  she shook her head.  Insufficient.  “It hurt to hear you speak of mages like that.  Just now.  Like they all ought to be put to death.“

Fenris opened his mouth as though to speak, but Hawke halted him with a hand.  Were he anyone else, she would have touched his arm, but as it stood, her hand stopped just a fraction away from touching him.  “Not for me.  Maker knows I probably ought to be put to death,” she laughed mirthlessly.  “But my sister?  And my father?”

This.  This was why it was easier to joke, or to fight and run off.  Now the emotion that lay underneath was coming up, rising, overflowing, and Hawke felt like she might explode, or else weep, either of which would be entirely unacceptable.  She bit the inside of her mouth and averted her eyes.

“They were good people.  Not like me.  They didn’t deserve to die, or to be locked away, or…”

When Fenris touched her, she was startled enough to look at him.  There was always such a deep-seated pain about him, especially around the eyes, that she felt especially badly for having contributed for it.  She wanted to apologize again, maybe a dozen more times, but words remained wholly insufficient.

Fenris gazed at her for a long time before he spoke.  She wasn’t certain what she expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t this.  “You’re not a bad person, Hawke,”

Again, that horrible, churning, rising emotion was taking over, and she had to avert her eyes.  Focused instead of Fenris’s hand on her arm, the lyrium markings that emphasized his long, bony fingers, the faint glow that drew attention to the way his wrists quivered sometimes.  “Oh.  Well.  Are you quite sure, Fenris?” she tried to speak lightly, but it came off a bit more tremulous.  “I think there’s at least an angry mob’s worth of people in Kirkwall who’d disagree with you.”

Fenris lightly touched his fingertips under her chin, but she was reluctant to meet his gaze.  She felt too vulnerable, too close to tears, never far enough removed from anything.

“I didn’t mean it.  Not about you, not about your family.  About all the mages in Tevinter?  Maybe.  About half the mages in Kirkwall?  Maybe.  But I shall endeavour to restrain myself in your presence if you would–”

“No!”  Hawke took his hand–lightly, so lightly she barely touched him–but still she saw him start just a little.  “No.  There’s no need, Fenris.  You should be able to speak freely.”  She squeezed his hand gently, then returned it to him.  “I’m sure one of these days, I’ll manage to get over myself and stop causing so much trouble.”

Fenris was still gazing at her with that uncomfortable intensity, like he could look inside of her, like he could see a heart to rip out and crush…or maybe something even deeper like that, like a soul.

Hawke backed away.   _Coward_ , she thought to herself.   _Still running away from real conversations._

“Right, so.  Death to mages!  Or whatever.”

“Hawke…”

But she was already halfway out the door.  Later on, sometime around her fifth or sixth drink, maybe she’d confess to whoever was listening how dreadful she’d always been at having difficult conversations, and how it made her wonder if running around doing other people’s dirty work was all she would ever really be good for.


	16. Tender

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cass/Lavellan

It’s early.  Must be, or still night.  Elonaya’s eyelids feel too heavy to open, and her body is sinking into her giant, too-soft bed.  Something is touching her, and she has to know what it is.  Has to drag herself out of sleep because chances are it’s a threat.  It’s always a threat.  Everything is a–

She recognizes the sensation now.  Fingers running through her hair, right at her temple, where it’s longest.  She did a hack job of cutting it all off when she left her clan.  She always admired other women she saw who had short hair.  Cassandra’s suit’s her so well, the Champion of Kirkwall’s looks so stylish, Sera’s is sort of intentionally choppy.  Hers just looks like a mess, she thinks.  Like an angry half-grown child had an axe to grind and nowhere to aim it.

Her mind is groggy, wandering, unfocused.  She can’t remember the last time that happened.  Must have been really tired to fall into a deep enough slumber for such a thing.  Back to the matter at hand.  Fingers through her hair, lulling her back to sleep.  She struggles to open her eyes, sees a bleary figure outlined by an aura of early morning sunlight.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” says Cassandra.  

There’s such warmth in her voice, such tenderness.  It’s almost jarring to think of the way Elonaya had felt about the selfsame person not a few months prior.

“Hm,” Elonaya replies, eloquently.  She rolls over onto her back, blinks a few time until the image of her guardian angel clears.  She remembers thinking of Cassandra’s features as harsh and angry, but has trouble seeing them that way now.  Especially when she’s looking down at Elonaya with such a softness about her.

“I hope you won’t think it strange,” Cassandra continues.  “It was…good, to see you sleeping.  I suspect you don’t get enough rest.”

Elonaya reaches hazily for Cassandra’s free hand and holds it against her heart.  “Maybe someday I’ll catch you in the act,” she replies, low and gravelly, and a little slurred.  Now that she’s coming out of it, she realizes she hasn’t slept that well in as long as she can remember.

Cassandra’s lip curls, and it’s a funny expression now, when Elonaya can’t see her as anything but soft and gentle and bathed in sunlight.  “Not if I’m doing my job,” Cassandra retorts.

Elonaya laughs–a deep, rich feeling that seems somehow to resonate throughout her whole body.  She pulls at Cassandra’s arms until Cassandra relents and lays back down beside her.

The world is falling down around them.  Any moment now, some urgent matter will require their immediate attention, and no matter how quickly they act, they’ll have already been too late.  This is the trail of thought that has weighed down every brief moment of non-misery Elonaya has experienced since the fabric of the universe tore itself asunder before her very eyes, and yet…

Lying here, looking at Cassandra with her face illuminated by the morning sun and her fingers in Elonaya’s hair has got to be the closest to truly happy she’s felt in as long as she can remember.


	17. Raindrops on eyelashes (FenHawke)

It never rains in Kirkwall.  Good damn thing, too, because the city is even more of a mess than usual.  No one quite knows how to handle the rain here–they’re all sort of huddled indoors, or as close as they can get to it–and the streets are eerily empty.  The rain has stirred up all the smells of human suffering that usually occupy various areas of town and mixed them together into something uniquely terrible, and the disrepair of the cobblestones is becoming blatantly obvious–there are puddles and muck and Maker knows what else flooding the places where people usually go about their days.

Hawke has of course been tromping about in it all day–doesn’t quite know the meaning of taking it easy–and her boots haven’t stood up to the challenge.  She’s cold and especially cranky, and her companions aren’t helping.  Aveline was the one who insisted that there was work to be done today, and she seems somehow immune to discomforts others find unbearable.  Merrill is optimistic to a fault, and Varric didn’t want to come at all.  He responded faithfully to Hawke’s plea for assistance, but is now putting his florid vocabulary to use in voicing his many complaints.

Mercifully, they peal off to their respective homes one after the other.  Hawke does her best not to snap at them–she knows it’s not technically their fault that she wants to smack each and every one of them.  As she parts ways with Varric, she thinks about the way he wrote a rainstorm in one of his stories–like it was some grand, romantic event.  Wipes at her face with a soaked sleeve, steps in another puddle of muck, and curses loudly into the clouds above her.

Suddenly it’s not raining quite so hard, as though the weather heard her expletive and backed the fuck off.  Hawke smiles a bit to herself at the idea.

“What are you doing?”

Hawke whirls around.  She’s not surprised she didn’t hear Fenris approach, but it’s a bit unnerving that he got this close without her notice.  The rain has even dampened her perception.  “Oh, you know,” she says, and makes a fruitless attempt at pushing her hair out of her face.  “In a fight with Mother Nature.  Got to show her who’s boss.”

Fenris looks like he means to frown, but chuckles, instead.  His hair is getting wet, but like the lyrium tattoos it no doubt came from, it never seems to lose its otherworldly glow.  He moves closer, rests his hands lightly in the general area of Hawke’s waist, and leans in for a kiss.  It’s cold first, then warm, and his grip on her waist tightens, and suddenly Hawke finds she doesn’t mind the rain so much.

There are raindrops resting on her eyelashes now, weighing her eyelids down and running down her cheeks like cold tears.  Granted what seems such an unusually open invitation, Hawke reaches up to thread her fingers through Fenris’s hair.  It’s thick, and wiry, and parts of it are still warm and dry.  Hawke grabs fistfuls of it, can’t quite bring herself to care that she’ll get him all wet by doing so, and wills him impossibly closer.

Vaguely, she realizes she’s shivering, and her socks are still miserably cold and soggy, but she can’t quite talk herself into pulling away.

In the end, it’s Fenris who pulls away, but only slightly.  “I’d been wondering earlier,” he says against her lips, “why so many stories described rainstorms as romantic.”

Hawke presses another kiss to his lips before she asks, “And have you come to a conclusion?”

Now Fenris runs his hands through Hawke’s hair.  They’ve gotten a little wet, but are still impossibly warm.  “There are many discomforts I would gladly endure for the pleasure of kissing you,” he says, voice low and resonant like the thunder.

“I’d have said the same thing,” Hawke smiles, still not quite removed from his lips.  “It was on the tip of my tongue.”

Fenris returns her smile, smaller and more subdued, then kisses her again.  “Although,” he says, “now that the matter has been settled, perhaps it would be…wise…to get you out of those wet clothes.”

“Of the utmost wisdom,” Hawke agrees solemnly.


	18. undone (cassadaar)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first piece with my new Adaar, Taman!
> 
> 2 prompts in one:  
> 33\. The feel of fingertips trailing over a bare shoulder blade  
> 43\. undone 
> 
> This one is NSFW!

It’s hard not to admire Cassandra Pentaghast.  Even in that hazy beginning, when Cassandra was literally calling for Taman’s head on a pike, Taman remembers being bizarrely stricken by her.  She’s a force of nature.  Now that Cassandra is almost companionable towards her, it’s hard to see how anyone could do anything but admire her.

And so, admire Cassandra, she does.  Unsubtly, she’s sure, and almost without shame.  It’s odd to see the Seeker within ten long paces of the tavern, but now that the business between her and Varric has been resolved (by way of his all-consuming amusement in response to her secret adoration of his romance novels), they’re almost friends, and he is the one who issued the invitation.

Cassandra has settled herself at the corner of the table nearest the door, and she declines the first round of Wicked Grace, saying she’s not much of a gambler.  Truthfully, neither is Taman, but near-death looming over your head has a way of dulling your sense for risk aversion.

Instead, Cassandra spends the game asking what each of the cards and hands revealed to her means.  She’s always got this intense stare thing going on, but it’s heightened tenfold when she’s curious about something in particular, and might also have something to do with lighting and a couple of drinks.

“Honestly, Inquisitor, I don’t know how you manage to–”

Their eyes lock, and Cassandra stumbles over her words.  Taman imagines she must be gaping open-mouthed and does her best to control her expression.  She takes another drink, which is perhaps not the wisest solution in the long-term.

“…keep.  All of this.  Straight.”  Cassandra finishes lamely.  She hasn’t broken eye contact, and there’s only so cool Taman can play it.

Which is…not cool at all.  “Well, you know the old joke, there’s only so much I can keep straight, Cassandra,” she says with a shrug, to appreciative laughter from the table, and her own mild mortification.  She returns her attention to her drink, completing what’s sure to be a vicious cycle.

“Good line,” says Sera.  “Blunt.  I like it.”

“I–well,” Cassandra manages.

She doesn’t ask quite as many questions after that.  The first round, and eventually, the game, goes to Lady Montilyet.  After that, most of the people who don’t practically camp out in the tavern take their leave, and the rest take to drinking and chatting.

Cassandra is almost, but not quite, avoiding Taman.  She’s getting a little tipsy now–Taman can see it in the flush of her cheeks and hear it in the warmth of her voice.  She’s talking to Varric, downright friendly by her standards, but always seems to look up and catch Taman watching her before Taman has the reflexes to look away.

Taman herself is in no hurry to leave.  She knows she won’t sleep well no matter what she does, and there aren’t too many people here with whom she can’t find something more interesting to talk about than the threat of utter annihilation.  So she’s still comfortably settled in her seat when Varric says, “Well, time to call it a night–I’ve got a few letters to write before, y’know, sunrise.  Evening, Seeker,” he says, then turns, inclines his head pointedly.  “Inquisitor.”

Cassandra doesn’t watch him go.  She’s affixed her full attention on Taman now, and it’s more than a little overwhelming.  “I…should go, too,” she says, reluctantly.

Taman offers her a small smile, equal parts hopefulness and nervousness.  “Stay awhile?  One more drink, maybe?”

Then, the strangest thing happens–Cassandra smiles back at her!  “Well.  If you insist.”

Cassandra sits close now.  Sometimes their knees brush, and it’s all Taman can do not to completely lose her shit.  She’s not usually so shy, but Cassandra has until very recently seemed so completely untouchable to her, it’s sort of earth-shattering to see her steely resolve coming undone under Taman’s gaze.

“Are you not tired, Inquisitor?” Cassandra wonders after a time.

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“Not at all!”  A hand on her knee.  Taman’s heart flutters unhelpfully.  “I was only asking because it is late.”

Taman shrugs.  “Never needed much sleep.  And…” she eyes Cassandra, “sometimes the waking world is more pleasant.”  She winks, feels stupid, returns to her drink.

Weirdly enough, it seems to have had the desired effect.  “Oh…that is…” the hand has settled onto her knee now.  More precisely, sort of sliding to her inner thigh now.  “…what I had hoped you might say,” Cassandra finishes, low and quiet.

Taman almost chokes on her drink.  Swallows hard, instead.  She tries to  look at Cassandra for clarification, but is pretty sure it’s less “curious, dashing qunari” and more “frightened halla.”

Cassandra isn’t quite looking at her.  She’s blushing furiously, and her gaze is affixed to her own hand on Taman’s thigh.  “Perhaps…you would like to…continue this discussion…elsewhere?”

Taman barely avoids grinning like an idiot.  She lays her own hand over Cassandra’s before it can make any more distracting progress.  “Perhaps I would,” she says.

It’s a valiant effort, keeping composure, but they don’t make it very far.  Just around the corner from the tavern, shrouded in darkness, the pressure of Cassandra’s hand in the crook of Taman’s arm becomes viselike, and she pulls Taman around to face her, with somewhat surprising strength even for a renowned warrior.

Taman can just make out the dramatic features of Cassandra’s face in the near darkness, and she takes a moment to admire them before she leans down to capture her lips.  It is, after all, hard not to admire Cassandra Pentaghast, in any circumstances.  Cassandra responds passionately, and Taman is nearly beside herself.  Now it’s her turn to pull Cassandra around, that she might pin her against the outside wall of the tavern.

They do relocate eventually, when they hear a particularly rowdy group exiting the building just a little too close, but they’re only a bit deeper into the shadows of the buildings before Cassandra drags Taman into another heated kiss which turns into a rather quick descent into the grass.

Cassandra’s hands are suddenly everywhere.  She runs them over the faint fuzz of new hair growing at Taman’s temples, the half-broken horns on her head, down her neck, and brushes her fingertips over Taman’s shoulderblades in a particular way that makes Taman’s whole body tingle.  Suddenly she is acutely aware of the position of every part of Cassandra’s body beneath her own–more precisely, she’s got a knee between Cassandra’s legs, and she can feel Cassandra grinding against it, feels the heat there in contrast with the cool night air around them, and feels the world spinning in response to the notion that this impossibility is happening.

Taman turns her attention to Cassandra’s neck–starts at the magnificent line of Cassandra’s jaw, and spares nary a thought for gentleness.  When she draws skin between her teeth, Cassandra groans into her shoulder and grinds harder against her thigh, and that is direction enough.

No one’s going to come over here into some dark alcove at this hour, but every time there are voices in the distance, Taman feels a jolt coursing through her that is both excitement and horror.  After all, near-death looming over your head _really_ has a way of dulling your sense for risk aversion.

Indeed, the risk seems to spur her on.  It fills her head with all kinds of potentially disastrous lines of reasoning, chief among them being _I want my head between your thighs immediately_.  She disentangles herself from Cassandra and intends to remedy that situation immediately, but Cassandra stops her.

“Wait!  I…what if…someone could–”

Taman presses a finger to Cassandra’s lips.  “Even if they did,” she says.  “What are they gonna do about it?”

She can only just barely see Cassandra bite her lip, but she’s sure it’s an image she’ll never be able to get out of her mind.

Taman somehow manages to work Cassandra’s trousers over her knees, but she doesn’t bother with any more than that.  She feels herself coming undone with the rush of it–of wanting Cassandra, of Cassandra wanting her, of the faint possibility of being caught–and it’s rendered her almost blissfully reckless.  She practically dives between Cassandra’s legs and tastes her eagerly, delights in how wet she is, and the way she shudders from the pressure of Taman’s tongue.

Taman takes her time at first, savouring Cassandra’s every reaction, but when Cassandra’s hands move from somewhere in the grass to gripping Taman by the horns, Taman loses her composure more than a little.  Taman loops her arms around Cassandra’s thighs (damn, those muscles!) and holds her closer.  Cassandra’s quiet sighs and groans become a little less quiet and a little more insistent, and Taman spares not another thought for taking her time.

She hopes there will be other times, but there’s no guarantee of anything these days.  Up until now, this brief moment in time has felt like a fluke.  But now, with Cassandra’s hands grasping her by the horns as she reaches climax, watching the faint outline of Cassandra’s hips rising to meet the ministrations of her tongue, feeling Cassandra’s thighs quiver as they press against the sides of her face…well, this is the closest thing Taman has ever known to a religious experience, and she feels herself coming undone at the sheer glory of it.


	19. saccharine (FenHawke)

Leandra has made them all scones, but they’re positively saccharine–so sweet they’re almost disgusting.  Even Merrill, who loves sweets and hates complaining, pulls a face when she tastes one, but takes a small parcel of them nonetheless.  Fenris, who isn’t accustomed to sweets that don’t come laced with intoxicants, cannot stomach more than one bite.

Hawke, in direct antithesis to her character, has not even touched them, and is instead curled up on her chair, glaring at an imaginary spot on the floor.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Fenris ventures.

“What’s to say, Fenris?”  Her voice, too, is saccharine like the scones.  So sweet that it ends up wrong and bitter and biting.  “Either way, I lose, don’t I?  Bethany stays here and the templars catch her, it’s my fault.  Bethany comes withme and something happens to her in the blighted Deep Roads, also my fault.  Isn’t it delightful, how that works out!”

At last she eyes the scones, but instead of stuffing one into her mouth as he anticipated she picks it up, contemplates it, then throws it hard against the wall, where it crumbles.

“Excellent way to attract rats,” Fenris remarks.

Hawke’s laughter is a mirthless bark.  She picks up another scone and lobs that one into the wall, too.

She’s leaving soon, he realizes suddenly.  Leaving soon, and hasn’t made up her mind yet about who she’ll be taking along. Leaving soon, and angry, and reckless, and guilty about the responsibility she feels for her sister.  It worries him.  Fenris has found within himself the root of something dreadfully inconvenient: a desire to protect her from harm.  Marian Hawke isn’t the sort of person you want to worry about–danger follows her like a disease, and she courts it like a lifelong lover.

“Well,” Fenris offers, “you may comfort yourself with the knowledge that your sister does not seem to attract disaster in quite the same way you do.”

This earns him a sideways smirk, and a scone tossed far more gently in his direction.  “Yes, I am the reigning champion of chaos, aren’t I?” she wonders lightly.

“Only noble title you’ll ever hold,” Fenris teases.

Hawke holds her hand to her chest as though wounded.  “I beg your pardon!  What about…Knight of Ne’er-Do-Wells?  Duchess of Disasters?  Bann of Bedlam?”

In spite of himself, Fenris laughs.  He bows his head, picks at a loose thread in his tunic.  “I will…miss you.  If you go without me.”

Hawke inclines her head playfully.  “Leave my trusty, giant-sword-slinging, heart-crushing elf behind?  Perish the thought!  However would I get along without you?”

Fenris looks up at her with a tentative smile, still fidgeting with his clothes as he begins to wonder, foolishly, however he has gotten along without her for the better part of his life up until now.

“Whatever you need, I am yours,” he swears.  Perhaps it’s a bit serious for the tone of this conversation, but he makes an effort always to say exactly what he means.

Hawke studies him for a moment, then picks up a scone and points it at him.  “Empress of Entropy!”

Fenris bows his head in mock solemnity.  “Long may she reign.”


	20. overgrown (Solavellan)

She’s feeling all wrong here.  The Veil is thin nearly everywhere now, distant echoes of spirits forever just barely too far off to understand, magic always crackling, raising gooseflesh on her skin no matter the temperature.

These ruins are overgrown with vines and all manner of strange flora, but she still catches sight of the old Elven writing peeking out from beneath them.  Always touches her hand to the writing as though it might tell her something if only she could reach it.  Imagines sometimes that it almost does.

She’s so wrapped up in her own thoughts that it takes her awhile to notice that Solas does the same thing.

She remembers how odd it was to her that a flat-ear who openly eschewed the Dalish should seem at odd times to feel so deeply for the plight of the elves, but she supposes now that it’s his relationship with the Fade that does it–that those feelings, those memories, those spirits he’s met there seem at times more real to him than anything in the waking world.

“Do you feel it, too?” she wonders quietly, when they’re walking alone.  “The way the writing almost…calls out?”

Solas looks at her with muted surprise.  “Yes.  There was once…great suffering in this place.  Grief has left its mark, through the ages.”

“Why do you look at me so strangely?” Elonaya wonders.

Solas inclined his head thoughtfully, softens his expression.  “I am…surprised you can sense it,” he says.  “I wonder…”

He has spotted another one–a bit of old Elven text chiseled into the stone, overgrown with vines that look almost as ancient and twice as foreign.  He takes her hand, the one that bears the mark, and presses it against the stone.  She feels a jolt of his telltale magic–cold and precise, and then…

Elonaya cries out, and her knees buckle.  The distant echoes are screaming now, in a language she barely understands, with voices full of anguish she has seldom known.  

Solas lets go of her hand abruptly and the screaming stops, but the echoes remain, and now that she has heard them, she cannot forget what she has experienced.  She realizes vaguely that she’s crying, and that Solas is kneeling beside her, attempting to comfort her.

It’s only what he says that draws her away from the echoes of grieving souls filling up her head, drowning out any other thought but loss, grief, pain,remember us, we grieve, we weep, remember– ” _Ma eth, ma vhenan, ir abelas_ , I’m sorry, you are safe,” a voice in the present insists, with hands clasping her shoulders.  “It’s only…”

And she knows what he’s going to say, and why he cannot quite bring himself to say it.  It’s only an echo, a piece of an old dream, he wants to assure her.  But those echoes–those feelings, memories, spirits he touches there are more real to him than anything in the waking world.

“It’s all right, Solas,” Elonaya says to him, instead.  “I know what you mean.”


	21. A person’s weight as she lies on top of you (Bethabela)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bethany Hawke/Isabela is my new fave rarepair. I'm working on a longer fic for them but it will take time and angst.

Though Isabela was no stranger to sharing a bed, she had never particularly cared for it.  She supposed if she had her druthers, she’d sleep as she had when she had a ship, in a sprawling bed that was just a little too soft, and sort of closed in around her when she really got comfortable, and she’d be so comfy-cosy that she wouldn’t feel the aching abyss of loneliness on either side of her.

As it stood, sometimes being cramped up against some unfortunate lout was preferable to facing the sound of your own thoughts.  She didn’t do so well with love and affection, after all, so what good was sharing a bed for anything other than avoidance?

Her first reaction when she trod reluctantly towards the waking world on this particular morning was one of hazy confusion.  There was a weight on her.  Sort of all over her, actually.  But it wasn’t unwelcome.

She hadn’t quite managed to open her eyes when she felt the little tickle of hair falling on her bare shoulder.  A person.  Cuddling her.  She could feel the arm and the leg positively draped over her.  Where was Isabela’s arm?  Wrapped around…?

This was enough to wake her more completely.  Sun was straming in through the window of her little room, not quite in her face, but close enough to rouse her at reasonable hours.  This was chief among the reasons she’d chosen this particular room to set up shop for the time being.  She blinked a few times, waited for the world to come into focus, then glanced down at the mess of person who was steadfastly snuggling her.

Bethany.

Isabela was not accustomed to warm, fuzzy feelings in the general area of her heart.  Felt unnerving.  Like indigestion.  Or some kind of irregularity she ought to bring up to the asshole healer mage.  That she should feel the urge to smile in spite of–or, more precisely, in response to such a disquieting sensation was surely the hallmark of a malady most deadly.

Why, she must surely remain bedridden, lest it get any worse.

Bethany stirred, propped herself up on her elbow and blinked a few times, then considered Isabela through the mess of her black hair with a sleepy smile.  Troublingly, Isabela’s heart set about fluttering afresh, and she reached out to push the hair from Bethany’s face.

“Morning, sweetness,” she murmured.  Not ‘ _move_.’  Not ‘ _it’s been fun, kitten, but please get your entire self off of me_.’

Bethany’s smile widened, impossibly, and Isabela’s heart actually leapt.  She really did need to look into that as soon as possible.  Bethany tugged the covers up over her shoulder, snuggled up closer to Isabela, and kissed her on the cheek.  “Morning,” she whispered back, and nestled her head right into the crook of Isabela’s neck.

The worst, the most mutinous thought of them all, was ‘ _oh, how I could get used to this_.’  Too easily, in fact.  Isabela could practically feel it radiating through her in waves of warmth and chills and nausea.  Not only was she pleased that Bethany hadn’t disentangled her limbs from Isabela just now, she had a premonition that she would feel unbearably light when they finally had to move.


	22. A kiss to hide from the bad guys (Bethany Hawke/Isabela)

“Hey!  You there!”

“Shit!  Drop your staff!”  This from Isabela, whose ability to spot a templar seemed to have gained equal ground with Bethany’s older sister in a matter of weeks since they’d started spending time together.

Though Bethany’s instinct for running was well-honed, she did think to protest the loss of the staff–it was a good find!  Still, she couldn’t rightly run and hide it.  She tossed it into the nearest alcove and hoped to the Maker it might still be there by tonight.

If Marian were around, she’d likely have picked it up before Bethany had time to miss it.  But it had been weeks and she was still in the Deep Roads somewhere, and Bethany was really starting to worry…

“Oh, for–we’ll get you another staff, come _on!”_ Isabela grabbed Bethany by the hand and pulled her into another alleyway Bethany had never even seen before.

But the templar who had spotted her was not so easily thwarted.  She could hear the heavy pounding of his boots a short distance behind them, rounding the same obscure corner.

Bethany was not her sister.  She took no pleasure in slumming around in dangerous places.  She didn’t know the dark corners of Kirkwall like the back of her hand, didn’t know whom she could trust to shield her outside of the circle of friends who were mostly loyal to Marian, and was not so reckless as to throw herself to the mercy of any stranger with a kindly face.

And Marian, who had kept her safe all the days of her life, wasn’t around now.  Wouldn’t be around for some time yet, if she ever…but Bethany mustn’t think of that.  She wasn’t here now, and Bethany was having a hard time filling her shoes.  All she had to rely on just now was Isabela.

Isabela led her into another abrupt turn while easily untying the sash around her waist and releasing her hair from its kerchief.  She led Bethany through a small crowd of people, and then into another little alcove, where she promptly threw her waist sash over Bethany’s hair, pushed her up against the wall, and kissed her.

And _oh_ , it wasn’t just any old kiss.  Isabela put her whole body into it, and Bethany felt her head spinning.  Isabela’s lips were so soft, and she kissed with such…certainty, such confidence that Bethany felt weak in the knees.  If Isabela’s body weren’t pressed up against hers so completely, she thought she might sink to her knees.

Bethany’s hands found their way to Isabela’s hips, rested there in perfect opposition to Isabela–uncertain, hesitant, faltering, trembling.  She couldn’t even begin to process this.  She could only hope it wouldn’t be over too soon.  She could only hope it wouldn’t be over forever.

The heavy templar footfalls paused among the crowd.  The voice that had called out to her said in their direction, “Ugh.  Refu scum.”  And then the boots departed, and Isabela pulled away, leaving Bethany breathless.

“Sorry about that, sweetness,” Isabela whispered, low and sultry.  “Well, I’m not that sorry.”

Bethany swallowed hard. She couldn’t quite bring herself to open her eyes completely, and settled her field of vision on Isabela’s lips.  “Good,” she whispered back.  “Because I’m not sorry at all.”

The corners of Isabela’s lips quirked upward.  “Well then,” she said.  “I’d like to kiss you again, but I hope the lack of imminent danger doesn’t dull the excitement for you.”

Bethany laughed, but it was embarrassingly breathy.  “I don’t think that will be a problem,” she murmured, just before Isabela claimed her lips once more.


	23. A kiss that shouldn't have happened (FenHawke)

And of course he’s here now.  Always here, never quite gone.  Never had the decency to leave completely, and she never had the decency to completely let him go.

He’s hovering in the doorframe like a spectre, shifting his weight, silent, still managing to fill the room with his presence even when it is so diminished like this.  She can just imagine him, eyes not quite downcast, catching himself, looking up at her, fiddling with the red favour he still wears around his wrist.

She’s drunk, probably.  Definitely.  She can’t really feel it in her head anymore, it’s more in her throat and her stomach.  Burning.  But everything is always burning, so that, too, is difficult to discern.

“I don’t know what to say,” he says, at last.  It’s so quiet, it’s barely even a sound, yet it seems to echo all around her, and she feels the tears she thought she’d cried out returning to her with a vengeance.  She swallows hard and pulls her knees up to her chest.

She can think of a thousand things to say to him, most of which aren’t particularly kind or useful. She’s been lashing out all day; all week, maybe.  Time doesn’t feel like it’s passing anymore.  She yelled at Aveline, at Varric, even at poor Merrill.  At least Fenris would yell back.  She thinks.  Probably.

If he didn’t, though, she’s certain she’d feel somehow even worse.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she says.  Her voice is hoarse from all the shouting, or maybe the crying.  She swallows again before she adds, “I’m glad you’re here.”

And realizes only after she’s said it that it’s true.  It feels like a weight she’s accidentally heaved off of her chest, like something she didn’t realize she’d meant to say for years now.

Fenris approaches, slow, hesitant steps.  She’s always admired how light-footed he is–an odd trait for a warrior who wield a sword the size of his entire body, but she guesses not such an odd thing for a fugitive.  She pats a spot next to her on her bed and he sits.  She can’t help but eye the favour she gave him what feels like a lifetime ago.

 _Can’t believe you still wear that thing_ , she thinks to quip, but can’t bring herself to do it.  She’s afraid if she mentions it at all, he’ll stop, and she’ll be heartbroken all over again.  Instead, she picks at the loose end of the ribbon with her fingers, tugs lightly on it, and gradually works her way along its length until her hand rests upon his wrist.

To her surprise, he turns his hand over so she can hold it properly.  Still gloved, covered in heavy leather as though he were going to battle.  Maybe he is, in a way.

She closes her eyes, allows herself to sink into the darkness in which she has shrouded herself, anchored to this world only by her hand in his.  “None of this feels real,” she confesses.  “Even though I saw it, lived it, fought it.  Do you ever feel that way?  Like you’re watching someone else’s life?”

Fenris is silent for a long moment, then he squeezes her hand.  “Yes.”

Hawke opens her eyes a sliver, but darkness reigns around her still.  She lets out a mirthless chuckle.  “Of course you do.  I’m sorry.”  She sighs and, either emboldened or terminally rash, leans her head lightly on Fenris’s shoulder.  He doesn’t have the spiky armour on just now, but his shoulders might as well be crafted from the same matter.  He doesn’t flinch or move away, though.  Indeed, he removes his hand from hers and places it, somewhat awkwardly, about her shoulders.

Hawke leans into him, rolls her head towards his chest and breathes him in, tries even in her addled state to commit this moment to memory, for she knows she may never be granted another.  “How do you deal with it?” she wonders quietly.

Fenris chuckles, low and not quite mirthless.  “Poorly,” he says.  

She laughs, too.  She can feel the way his lips move against the fibres of her hair, and it sends a warm jolt through her that feels almost overwhelming amid the blur of hazy sorrow.  She cranes her neck so she can look up at him, and all of a sudden, quite accidentally, her lips are not a breath away from his.  She sees a flash of something in his eyes, anxiety and longing and melancholy all mixed together, perhaps utterly inseparable, and she’s not sure if he closes the distance or she does, and she’s not sure if it matters in the end.

His kiss brings everything flooding back, everything she thought she’d yelled and cried and drunken out into bearable numbness, and she pulls away with tears streaming down her face, whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

She expects him to leave, to be furious with her, or hurt–betrayed, even.  But he doesn’t seem to move very much at all.  Only holds her with stiff, awkward arms and rocks her while she cries.  She can’t bear to look at his face anymore, not even in near-darkness, so she can’t possibly know even a fraction of his thoughts.

His hand finds its way to the back of her head, and the red ribbon on his wrist grazes the side of her cheek as he strokes her hair.  Never quite gone, and she can never quite bring herself to let him go.


	24. A kiss on the ear (Cassandra/female Adaar)

It’s funny, the way Cassandra softens when even the slightest softness is shown to her.

People call her hard, unyielding, but it’s clear to Taman that this hardness is learned, a response to the hardness of the world around her.  Cassandra wanted to be a Templar.  She was a Seeker, an order that ruled over the Templars and shared many of its values.  Of course she would have to be hard.

But now, lying here, practically encased in lavish bedding and fluffy pillows, bathed in the early morning light that pours in from the balcony, she looks positively angelic, and Taman is loath to disturb her.

Taman sinks back into her own fluffy pillows, turns her attention to the high, arching ceiling above them.  Unlike most of Skyhold, this room was found almost perfectly intact.  Taman wonders if someone slept here in the days of old, or if it was a study, or perhaps a sort of war room like the one downstairs. She’ll have to ask Solas if he can see it through the Fade or whatever it is he does.

She closes her eyes and breathes deeply.  The air here is…crisp, cold, fresh.  Something she noticed almost instantly.  She’d gotten so used to the smells of death and ash, cities and bodies and souls on fire, that fresh air felt almost painful to inhale at first, like her lungs weren’t up to the challenge.  It’s a small comfort, to be sure, what with the impending doom hanging all around them day in and day out, but she’ll take what she can get.

Cassandra stirs next to her, and Taman cracks open one eye, just enough to observe her.  Cassandra, too, contemplates the ceiling for a moment, breathes deeply, then turns, leans in to kiss Taman on the tip of her ear, and nestles her head into the crook of Taman’s neck.

Taman would have liked to feign sleep a little while longer, but she can’t possibly keep her composure.  She smiles, and feels a breathy sort of laughter bubbling up from her stomach as she snakes her arms around Cassandra and pulls her closer.

“Oh,” Cassandra utters.  “I…thought you were…”

“What,” Taman teases.  “Wouldn’t have given me a good morning kiss if you thought I was awake?”

“I…”

“Mhm.  You like the pointy ears, I get it.”

Cassandra responds with her characteristic grunt of disapproval, but she makes no effort to pull away, and indeed, snuggles just the tiniest bit closer.


	25. I found you...petting a dog (Cassandra/Hawke)

Since when had the Inquisition had Mabari?  This one was eyeing her.  It made Cassandra nervous.  They weren’t usually so friendly with those on whom they hadn’t imprinted.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

The dog cocked its head, whined, panted.

“I have nothing for you,” she said, holding out her hands to show it.

The dog approached nonetheless, and nosed her empty hands.  It was odd to see a war dog so amiable.  Cassandra felt her heart twist in surprise, and the corner of her mouth twist into an unwitting smile.  She scratched the creature behind the ears, and it leaned into her hand.

“There you are!” came an unfamiliar voice.  Unfamiliar, yet somehow Cassandra felt she had heard it in her very soul.  “Terribly sorry.  She’s too friendly for her own good.”

Cassandra looked up slowly, as though in a trance, and set eyes upon what could only be the Champion of Kirkwall.  She didn’t quite look like the sketches in the book, of course, or like the Wanted posters Cassandra had seen, but her inky black hair and the peculiar scar across her nose were unmistakable.

The Mabari who had been leaning into Cassandra’s side barked happily and returned to its mistress, and Cassandra remained utterly mute.

The Champion–Hawke–scratched the dog’s ears.  “I hope she didn’t pester you too much,” she amended, with a lopsided grin.

Cassandra swallowed hard, possibly audibly.  “You…I…are you…?  Forgive me, but…”

Hawke’s free hand strayed to the back of her neck.  “Ah, uh.  Right.  Sorry, it’s still a bit odd for me that Varric’s book has become so famous.”  She extended her hand, and her Mabari leaned into her side in its absence.  “My name is Hawke.  Though I…gather you know that already.”

Cassandra glanced from her extended hand up to her face and back again, took it belatedly and shook it firmly, and perhaps a bit too long.  “It is..a pleasure, Champion.”

“Uh,” her eyes darted away and back.  “Don’t…use that title much anymore.”

Cassandra’s thoughts were racing.  Thoughts of the months-long search she had fronted, thoughts of the months she had interrogated Varric, how furious she ought to be with him for keeping Hawke with her, how furious she likely would be–but later, not now.  Not now, when the Champion of Kirkwall, the hero of one of her favourite tales of all time, stood before her, alive and in the flesh, and with a…

“Your dog,” Cassandra uttered at last.  “I…in the story, your dog went with…”

Hawke pulled a face, withdrew her hand to scratch her dog’s ears once more.  “Couldn’t leave my girl with my wretched brother forever, could I?” she said.  “And…” she leveled Cassandra with a…strangely disarming smile.  “I’m afraid I haven’t yet caught your name, milady.”

Cassandra’s own hands hovered awkwardly at her waist.  She’d taken at some point to unabashed fidgeting.  “I am…” she began, weakly, then straightened her shoulders and tried again.  “I am Cassandra Pentaghast, Champion.  A former Seeker of Truth and a servant of the Inquisition.  It is an honour to meet you.”

A shadow of doubt crossed the Champion’s face–something in the eyes, perhaps–but her strangely charming, lopsided smile did not falter.  “Well,” she said, in that light, piercing voice Cassandra had never heard, yet somehow felt that she had, “if my dog likes you, then I’d venture to say it’s an honour to meet you, as well, my lady Seeker.”


	26. I found you...planning a surprise party for me (Solavellan)

“When were you born?” she asked him one night, while they looked up into the starry sky.  The stars were so bright over Skyhold.

“What?” he breathed, caught off his guard.

“When were you born?” she echoed.  “What’s your birthday?”

“Oh.”  He wanted to laugh.  Relief.  Melancholy.  “It’s in Wintermarch.  The twentieth.”

He felt her eyes on him even in the darkness.  ‘Is it such an odd question?”

“No,” he said.  “Forgive me.  It has…been a long time.  I haven’t thought abut it for many years.”

“Hm.”  The edges of her fingers were brushing against the tips of his, but neither of them made a move to close the distance between them.

“When were you born?” he asked her.

“Ninth of Cloudreach, I’m told,” she replied lightly, and he thought about the ways in which the both of them spoke of such trivialities with such a weight behind the words, each of them rife with secrets they were not quite ready to reveal.

Perhaps, he thought, this was part of the reason he felt such asn uncommon kinship with her.

A sevenday or so later, this night stuck in his mind.  Perhaps it was the restrained intimacy of it, the sharing without quite sharing, or perhaps it was the particularly clear night, the sky so filled with stars that it was near overwhelming.

He wandered into the tavern with halting steps–hoped to catch only her attention and not that of other far less welcome company that often frequented the place.  But what greeted him instead was a conversation that scarcely made any sense to him.

“Oh, you are in it deep,” Sera laughed.

Varric was laughing, too, but perhaps a bit more kindly.  “This is so…unexpected of you, Inquisitor,” he said.

“Yes, and I thank you for your undying support,” Elonaya snapped.  Her voice was muffled, as though she spoke from behind her hands.

Before Solas had time to fully process what he was hearing, he took a step backward and pressed himself against the wall just inside the tavern’s door, out of sight.

“Would Elfy even like a party?” Sera wondered.  “Do elves like fun?”

“You’re an elf,” Elonaya retorted.

Sera made a noise which indicated the depth of her disdain.  “Doesn’t count.  Do you like fun?  Anyone ever throw you a party?”

“Not a fun one,” Elonaya replied cryptically.  “Which is why I am asking for your help.”

“Oh, I think the promise of help was a foregone conclusion, Inquisitor,” said Varric with uncommon cheerfulness.  “But you gotta admit, the idea of Chuckles at a surprise party is objectively hilarious.”

Since he’d awoke, all of Solas’s emotions had been predictable.  Once the abject sorrow had subsided as much as it ever would, everything that had followed had felt distant and hollow, a mere suggestion of itself.  Not real.  Not even close.

Now, though, something immediate and primal and visceral tugged at the pit of his stomach.  Something from childhood, an emotion unrefined by age and unmarred by critical thought.  He felt hopeful, or desperately anxious, or a mixture of the two, and could not wrap his mind around the name or the source of it.

He thought to exit the tavern as quickly as he had come, to surround himself in the relative peace of the winter’s night, underscored only by wind and the muted chatter from the people indoors.  But before he could leave, someone across the room spotted him and declared, to the great amusement of his companions, “Well, if it isn’t everyone’s favourite apostate hobo!”

Elonaya’s head appeared around the corner almost immediately, face stern but eyes alight.  “Solas?”

Hesitantly, but guided by the assurance in her features, Solas took a step forward rather than backward,  “I…” he began, but found that he had nothing to add.  What would he say?  I wanted to see you?  I saw the stars in the sky and thought only of you?  Foolish.

“Never seen you darken the doors of this place,” said Elonaya with the tiniest hint of a smile.  “Would you like to join us?”

“Ugh.  Whatever,” this from Sera.  “Just keep your ancient elfy shit to a dull roar, would you?  Won’t have anything else killing my buzz.”

He joined them quietly, allowed the strange amicability of Varric’s pat on his shoulder, basked in the hesitant half smiles of Elonaya, and ordered something dark and bitter and strangely refreshing.  

Vaguely, yet consistently, he mulled over a conundrum in the back of his mind. Would he ask Elonaya about what he had overheard, later?  Surely she would answer him truthfully if he did.

Or, then again, might he, possibly, just this once, leave this one small, infinitely personal matter to chance?


	27. I found you...waiting for me (Solavellan)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-Faded for Her

_I will stay, then. At least until the Breach is closed._

_Was that in doubt?_

Elonaya runs her fingertips over the open pages of the book he left open on his desk.  It’s new–a volume on rift magic that’s mostly rambling notes on experimental research.  No one remarks on it–perhaps they don’t notice, or don’t want to, but while the whole of Thedas is acting like rift magic is a new discovery, Solas wields it as though he has always known how.  It’s as impressive as it is unsettling.

She marvels at the naivete of her question all those months ago, and yet again at the familiarity she allowed to settle into her bones.  Of course Solas might have departed at any moment.  Of course he wouldn’t stay forever.  What is there for him here?  What is there for Elonaya here but shackles placed upon her by the strange magic upon her hand?

Solas has been away for something like a fortnight now.  Foolish though she knows it is, Elonaya finds herself lingering around the places he used to frequent, a ghost of something that barely ever was.  She touches his books and his notes but will not move them. She retraces his steps along the battlements and whispers to herself to remember the old Elven words he shared with her while they walked.  She sometimes wakes late at night or early in the morning to find she’s fallen asleep curled up on the divan in his study.

This is how he finds her.

“Inquisitor?”

She starts awake, blinks against the darkness of the room until she sees his outline in the moonlight.

“Solas,” she breathes.  "I wasn’t sure you were coming back.“

He inhales, hesitates. She still can’t see his face, and she finds this oddly unnerving.  He is much more imposing as a silhouette than as a person in the daylight.

"Neither did I, for a time,” he says at last.

The words sting. Foolish.  She covers it up with a feeble attempt at a joke.  "Guess I owe Varric an ale.“

Solas doesn’t respond for a moment, then, somehow even more quietly, says, "You were a true friend. I could hardly abandon you now.”

Elonaya runs a hand through her hair and sits up, feeling suddenly embarrassed for being here. “Well.  Good.  I’m…glad. That you came back.”  She stands, and finds herself strangely overwhelmed by his presence in the darkness, existing somewhere between her and her exit.  She still can’t quite make out the features of his face.   “I missed you,” she confesses somehow, barely audible and without any thought.

Silence.  Not even a breath.  Then, “I missed you, as well.  It is…”  He advances, only a step, yet the movement feels monumental, like darkness drawing her in. “You are…part of the reason I returned.”

Elonaya’s stomach twists unhelpfully.  "Is that so?“

He takes another step closer, and at this distance she can just barely make out the stern features of his face.  Severe set of the jaw, subtle furrowing of the brow, intensity of the eyes, parting of the lips…

"But I have disturbed your slumber already, Inquisitor,” he says, low and controlled.

Elonaya is all but overwhelmed by the impulse to throw herself at his mercy.  Her body is positively aflame with the possibility. But she digs her fingernails into her thigh and wills herself to resist.  "Not at all,“ she says, her voice thin and silvery with restraint.  "I should…leave you to settle in.”

The words feel heavy and clumsy on her tongue, and she feels her resolve slipping by the second.  She feels the warmth from his hand not a finger’s width away from her arm, and she’s certain if he touches her, she will come undone, but he does not make contact, and she manages to walk past him into the darkened hallways that will lead her to her own room and her own empty bed.

Elonaya is haunted by visions of Solas in the Fade that night, tall and imposing and shimmering in moonlight.  But she reminds herself firmly that it is enough that he has returned at all, more than enough that he missed her.  She oughtn’t to let her impulses guide her so recklessly in these trying times.


	28. I found you...in the afterlife (Solavellan)

There is a place that exists outside of time and space, somewhere between one life and the next. How long one tarries there is somewhat irrelevant, and depends on any number of things.  Perhaps another life calls to her, or perhaps she has tired of the limits of corporeal forms.  Perhaps she clings to a past that is long lost to her, or perhaps nothing at all strikes her fancy now, and she will wait here in between until something does, or until she gradually fades away into nothingness.

One might not know why she is waiting at all, only that something, or someone, retains its hold on her, preventing her from moving forward.

She was called Elonaya in her last life, and the name clings to her still.  She remembers the name on the lips of her clanmates who told her how her mother had insisted on the name before she died.  She remembers the name angry on the lips of her Keeper, imploring her to see reason where there is little.  She remembers the name hesitant and kind on the lips of new friends who smiled at her, perhaps only because they believed she was their only hope. She remembers it soft and low on the lips of a lover who dared to outshine the rest even in his infinite treachery.

She lived briefly and marvelously, and like a dying star, she went out in flames.  She still remembers the pain of it, even though the experience seems an eternity away.  She remembers the strangeness of the mark on her hand and the way it slowly fed poison into her magic.  She remembers the haunted look in his eyes as he tried to save her by removing the source–his source.

Like a dying star, too, she did not die entirely in vain.  She halted countless horrors in her meager handful of days.  She did not leave the world a better place, perhaps, but she left it alive, and with the capacity to rebuild.

There’s a vague thought somewhere, that perhaps she will awaken in a kinder world.  But those words are too familiar to be believable, and it’s the familiarity that tugs at her ankles, beckons her to linger awhile. What can await her, after all?

She feels the atmosphere change when he draws near.

This place is like the Fade to her, and its properties seem equally familiar, in that thoughts and emotions seem much more real and immediate than more tangible matters. Perhaps it is the Fade.  A comforting thought, that the lost never truly leave the parts of the universe we recognize.  Then again, she remembers how he spoke of his spirit friend, how Wisdom would disperse and rematerialize some other time, similar but not the same, and thinks that perhaps it is less comforting than she wishes it were.

But the fact remains that she can feel him here, and with the feeling comes the name, and with the name comes the person.

“Solas.”

His head is bowed as he moves towards her.  Perhaps he has felt her, too.  Perhaps, Fadewalker that he is, he has come here intentionally.

“My heart,” he says.

She doesn’t merely remember this feeling.  It returns to her in full force.  It rends her heart afresh, as though years hadn’t passed since last she heard him say it. Once she used to go out of her way to walk past him, hoping only that he might utter this simple phrase in passing.

She’d thought herself foolish for doing this, yet it wasn’t only the sweetness of it that appealed to her. Elves did not throw around the word _vhenan_.  The weight of the phrase whispered to her of ancient mysteries just beyond her grasp, things she could not quite understand, but might if only she listened closely enough.

Now, somewhere outside of the physical limitations of being young and impatient, she still isn’t sure she completely understands.  There is so much of her history, her people, that has been denied her.  There is so much of Solas she may never fully understand. For want of context, for want of time, for want of the strength to bear it.

“Please,” he utters.  "Say something.“  The last time she saw him, he seemed larger than life.  Truly a man who had been elevated to the status of a god.  Now he seems so much smaller.

“I was thinking,” says Elonaya slowly, and finds her voice unburdened by the pain of the last few years of her life, “of how I once felt I knew you so well, even though I didn’t know very much at all.”

Solas’s brow knits. He remains ever burdened.  "You knew me better than anyone.“

"For a time,” says Elonaya.

“Ever,” Solas replies severely.

Elonaya shakes her head, almost amused.  "For a time, you knew me better than anyone, too,“ she says.

Solas’s face twists into something like sad half-amusement.  "I hope you replaced me with better confidantes.”

Elonaya considers them, the people who never quite knew what to do with her, who did their best to comfort her when she didn’t want to admit that she was hurt.  She remembers the ache in her heart for what she lost when Solas left–like a vital piece of herself had been removed.  Even the feeling of losing her arm had not compared to it.  She remained complete without her arm.  Without her heart, well.  She was much changed, at the very best.

“Never better,” she says at last.  "But we learned to understand one another well enough to get by.“

Solas bows his head again. "Well,” he says quietly. “That is…often the best we can hope for.”

“Solas?”

He looks up.  She remembers the way his eyes used to reflect stormy skies and raging seas.

“How did you find me here?”

He opens his mouth as though to speak, but nothing follows.  He averts his eyes for a moment, but then focuses squarely upon her once more.  "Forgive me, vhenan,“ he breathes.  It’s little more than a breeze, little more than distant thunder, yet she feels it more clearly than anything else in this place where she lingers without knowing why.

"It was…selfish of me,” Solas continues after a time.  "I shouldn’t have held onto you any longer.  I…“

Impulsive.  She remembers suddenly the way she used to be ruled by impulses and reckless behaviour.  This is the first impulse she has felt since she found herself here. She moves forward and takes Solas’s hand from where it is balled into a fist at his side.

His eyes are wide, alarmed, shining as though with unshed tears, and his face is gradually contorting with the effort of holding them back.

"I was afraid,” he whispers.

“Of what?”

“Dying alone.”


End file.
